Staged task-force update clumsy Tory misdirection away from Manitobans awaiting medical help By: Tom Brodbeck Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Thursday, Apr. 20, 2023

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This article was published 20/04/2023 (913 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Stefanson government’s claim this week that it has significantly reduced pandemic backlogs for medical services was mostly a publicity stunt.

It was meant to distract attention away from Manitoba’s crumbling health-care system.

The diagnostic and surgical recovery task force, appointed by the provincial government in 2021, announced Wednesday it has reduced the pandemic backlog for diagnostic tests by 31 per cent and 32 per cent for surgeries. However, it provided no breakdown for individual procedures (other than a percentage change for each) and no details on how it calculated the figures.

Manitoba surgery, diagnostic task force announces strides forward in pandemic backlog

The task force says it tracks wait times and backlogs for 30 medical procedures. But it listed only 15 where backlogs were supposedly eliminated or reduced. It didn’t share backlog figures for each procedure, nor provide any information about the other 15 categories.

Only nine of the 30 areas the task force says it tracks are included in the province’s online dashboard, where the public can view information such as wait times, completed cases and backlogs. There is no publicly available information for the other 21 procedures. Manitobans are just supposed to take government’s word that backlogs have been reduced or eliminated in those areas.

That’s difficult to do, considering task-force officials also admitted Wednesday that much of the data they’re relying on is faulty. Only a minority of procedures, such as hip and knee replacements, have central intake systems where wait times and backlogs can be accurately tracked. Those are the ones listed on the online dashboard. The rest are based on unreliable data-collection methods.

“Other areas, like general surgery, it’s extremely difficult; you basically have to phone offices and ask them what their wait time is, which isn’t very accurate,” task-force steering committee chair Dr. Peter MacDonald said. “Some of the areas, we’re guessing.”

If much of it is guess work, how can government confidently claim it has reduced backlogs by more than 30 per cent?

Wednesday’s announcement wasn’t meant to provide the public with reliable information about wait times or backlogs. It was an attempt at a feel-good story less than six months before an election, scheduled for Oct. 3.

That’s why Health Minister Audrey Gordon’s political assistant, Draper Houston, was at the event (even though the minister wasn’t). He helped organize the presentation and directed questions from the news media. He even interrupted reporters’ questions at one point to ask if MacDonald had anything to add on a particular issue. It felt more like a campaign announcement than a technical briefing.

What the task force didn’t mention is wait times for surgical procedures that are tracked using accurate data – hip, knee, cataract and cardiac — were all higher in 2022 compared with 2019, the year before the pandemic. The most recent data show wait times for hip and knee surgery were higher in January than in December.

The number of people on wait lists for three of those four surgical categories has skyrocketed since 2019 (it has gone up only slightly for cataracts). For knee surgery, the wait list grew to 2,346 patients in 2022 from 1,322 in 2019.

The task force claimed there’s been a “dramatic” increase in the number of hip and knee surgeries performed. In fact, there were slightly fewer knee surgeries performed in 2022 than 2019, and only 95 more hips.

The province has returned to 2019 volumes for hip and knee surgery. However, demand for those procedures is growing by an estimated five per cent a year. There is still a backlog of more than 1,000 patients from the pandemic (a figure that has barely improved since last summer). The task force didn’t mention any of that.

MacDonald says they need to do about 6,000 hip and knee surgeries a year to eliminate the pandemic backlog and reduce wait times. They did 5,060 in 2022.

The task force also claimed in its presentation Wednesday that it plans to “eliminate” wait lists for cataract surgery within two years. Dr. Ed Buchel, surgical lead on the task force steering committee, went further. He said they hope to eliminate all wait lists.

It was a ludicrous statement, considering there is always a waiting period for elective procedures. It’s not like ordering a Big Mac at a drive-thru.

When pressed, Buchel said what he really meant is the province wants to bring Manitoba’s wait times down to national standards.

Why didn’t he just say that instead of making a false statement?

Because this was a political event, not a genuine effort to provide Manitobans with an accurate, fulsome update on hospital wait times.

tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca

Tom Brodbeck
Columnist

Tom Brodbeck is an award-winning author and columnist with over 30 years experience in print media. He joined the Free Press in 2019. Born and raised in Montreal, Tom graduated from the University of Manitoba in 1993 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and commerce. Read more about Tom.

Tom provides commentary and analysis on political and related issues at the municipal, provincial and federal level. His columns are built on research and coverage of local events. The Free Press’s editing team reviews Tom’s columns before they are posted online or published in print – part of the Free Press’s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.